


Catching Snowflakes

by genarti



Series: old drabbles and ficlets [7]
Category: The Dark Is Rising
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-21
Updated: 2004-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in September 2004, as a birthday fic for Saphyria, who wanted to read about the Black Rider being smug.  Short fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catching Snowflakes

He is older than all of humanity, and he has forgotten times and places that no human now alive could think of. His lip curls a little in derision when he thinks of it, of those slow stupid mortals with their humdrum little lives, all imagining that they are the center of the universe. Cattle, they are, and he as far above them as they are above their farmyard animals -- and farther, for an angry bull or boar can kill a man easily, while every mortal creature of the earth is as putty in his hands.

And now he smiles, thin and cruel and cold as the thick unnatural snow that settles gleaming on his dark cloak, because he has an especially lovely little piece of putty to play with. Young and pretty and golden-haired, with a mind as empty as a milk-cow's, and emptier now that he holds her hair and her mind and her pretty little birth-token in his spell-graven box. He lets her infantile prattle wash over him, and watches the black strands of his horse's mane twist around her fingers.

Youth and prettiness and golden hair mean nothing to him; he has seen a thousand thousand girls just like her, all of them looking at the world through veils of mortality and seeing nothing of its true nature and true potential. But this Mary Stanton is the sister of the last Old One, still young and pale-haired and half-veiled himself, and thus she is a hold over him.

Which means that to hold her is to hold power.

And that means everything to him.

He smiles wider, white teeth gleaming like the ice hanging from the dark silent trees.


End file.
